Strange Attractors (1985)

  He heard the wind and the sand grating on the bare boards of

  houses. His line of images joined with memory of the town. The

  combination of memories formed a complete whole that was the

  experience of the town. With it, he could ignore the circus and the

  trucks’ colours and the child’s scratchings in the dirt.

  John Hargreaves went further. He thought of a child at his back

  growing towards this instant, then on into age. He pushed harder,

  trying again to make the experience real. He wanted to see the

  child and the aged man at the ends.

  A face, lined and scarred with age, regarded him from the

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  Tim othy D ell

  mirror. The shock of its smile broke the images he had made. The

  old man led him out. In the light John Hargreaves put money into

  the old m an’s hands. The refusal made him leave without words.

  On the veranda of the hotel he could feel the wind rising. It made

  the dust of the street smooth. The sight repelled him. The desert

  would destroy him like this. He could not yet return to it. He felt

  the hard chair on his back, saw the smooth street, heard the grating

  rise with the wind. The pattern in it was stale.

  At the end of the street was the desert. The track went out into it,

  completely straight. The dust obscured portions of it. Several

  trucks came down the street. They stopped in front of the hotel.

  People came out and went in for a last drink. In one of the cabins he

  could see the old man. He was not smiling.

  Hargreaves stood up with his pack in his hand and put a question on his face. The old man pointed towards the back of the truck.

  Hargreaves went around and climbed in. Soon the trucks started

  up. As they left town he could see the houses. They were painted a

  brilliant white.

  The truck moved faster than the wind, too quickly for the dust.

  The old man came through the back of the cabin and beckoned. He

  had a can of polish in one hand and a rag in the other. He handed

  them to John Hargreaves.

  The mirrors were stacked inside the truck. The old m an showed

  Hargreaves how to clean them, and went back into the cabin.

  Hargreaves started to clean the mirrors carefully, seeing his face as

  he did so. He made circles with the polish and destroyed them with

  the rag.

  The old man put his head through and smiled at Hargreaves

  working on the mirrors. He smiled back. At the open back of the

  truck blew the dust. John Hargreaves cleaned the mirrors. He soon

  forgot about the wind.

  The way she smiles,

  the things she says

  ©

  GREG EGAN

  Danny got home from the brothel just before midnight. He usually

  stayed all night, but the whore had thrown him out.

  ‘Why? W hat did I do?’

  ‘You were saying things in your sleep. I don’t have to put up with

  that.’

  ‘W hat kind of things?’

  ‘The kind of things I don’t have to listen to.’

  ‘What? Dirty things?’

  ‘Strange things.’

  ‘Frightening things?’

  ‘No. The kind of things that give me a headache. The kind of

  things that give me a pain in the arse.’

  ‘Tell me one of them.’

  ‘I can’t remember. Go on, get out.’

  ‘You must remember some of it.’

  ‘Hey, Daisy! This guy’s making trouble!’

  ‘I’m going.’ Daisy was three metres tall, with arms as broad as

  Danny’s chest. It was rumoured that she collected the menstrual

  blood of all the whores, and drank it mixed with vodka, but Danny

  knew that none of the whores menstruated.

  The front rooms were in darkness, but the kitchen light was on,

  Danny called out, ‘I’m home early’ as he walked towards the

  kitchen, thinking that it was like walking down a dark tunnel,

  perhaps like being born. He felt deja vu, he felt slightly stoned.

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  Greg Egan

  ‘Hi Dad,’

  His son Tom stood by the stove, heating milk in a saucepan,

  naked. ‘I’m making Milo. Do you want some?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  W hat was wrong? Something had to be wrong. People aren’t

  naked in kitchens, they’re naked in bedrooms and bathrooms.

  Never kitchens. Something had to be wrong. Danny’s hands hanging by his sides suddenly seemed awkward, unnatural. He folded his arms. T hat seemed wrong, too, so he put them out horizontally,

  stretched, then placed his hands behind his neck and rubbed it,

  yawning.

  ‘How come you’re home so early?’

  ‘Oh, we got all the tracks done,’ Danny said easily. ‘One, two,

  three, like magic. They must have been doing a lot more rehearsing

  than I thought.’

  ‘An album in three hours, that must be some kind of a record!’

  ‘Oh, it’s all fucking computers anyway. None of the so-called

  musicians even raised a sweat,’ Danny lied so well he felt genuine

  disdain.

  A joke. A pun. Weak, I know.’

  ‘W hat?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  Danny wanted to say: Why are you standing in the kitchen

  without any clothes on? He couldn’t. Tom didn’t seem to be embarrassed or self-conscious at all. Danny wondered: Is this what he does whenever I’m away? Wander around the house naked?

  ‘You’re up late. School tomorrow.’

  ‘Nag, nag, nag.’

  Tom didn’t sleep naked; he bought and looked after his own

  clothes, but Danny had seen him hundreds of times wearing

  pyjamas, had seen them in the washing basket, had seen them on

  the washing line. Maybe it was a phase he was going through.

  Maybe he’d just had a shower, and had put the milk on the stove so

  it would be ready by the time he put his pyjamas on, but then

  Danny had walked in so he’d stayed to talk to him. Danny smiled

  with relief. That was it, exactly. Why had he been so paranoid?

  After all, why should Tom have made sure he was dressed before

  going into the kitchen, when there was nobody else in the house,

  and nobody expected home for hours?

  Danny sat down and pretended to read the paper, then glanced

  up at the sound of Tom pouring the milk. How old is he? Thirty-

  The way she smiles, the things she says

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  four minus twenty is fourteen. Danny curdled at two disparities: it’s

  not fair that he’s no longer fourteen himself, and when he was fourteen he sure didn’t look like Tom, tall and muscular. Tom’s already taller than Danny.

  Tom crossed the kitchen with a mug of Milo in each hand.

  Danny opened his mouth, and took the first breath for saying ‘I

  said I didn’t want one,’ but stopped in time, because Tom walked

  right past him, out of the kitchen, towards his bedroom.

  Danny looked down at the paper. He’s got a girl in there. Maybe

  he wants two mugs himself, maybe he’s a Milo junkie. Don’t be

  stupid and naive, he’s got a girl in there, how could you not have

  guessed? He’s just been fucking her, that’s why he’s naked, idiot.

  He’s fourteen and he’s got a girl in his room. Are you angry,

  jealous, proud? All three. You were nineteen w'he
n you finally

  fucked his mother, years after all your university friends had

  tertiary syphilis. Fourteen. Shit. You couldn’t have at fourteen.

  Physically impossible, admit it.

  Danny stared and stared at the paper. Should he go to bed, pretend he didn’t know, never say anything about it? Should he walk casually into Tom’s room and ‘accidentally’ discover her? Don’t be a

  bastard, why try to embarrass him? He’ll tell you if he wants to tell

  you. W hat did you expect, did you want him to say, as soon as you

  walked in, ‘Hi, Dad, there’s this friend of mine, this girl, here, in my

  room actually, and, in case you’re wondering why I’m standing

  here naked in the kitchen, it’s because I took all my clothes off

  before I fucked her and I haven’t got around to putting any back on

  yet, largely because I’m very seriously entertaining the idea of fucking her again in the not too distant future.’

  Danny made himself a cup of coffee and stared at the paper some

  more. He felt wretched, guilty, old. Old enough to have a virile son

  is too old to be virile yourself, it stands to reason. Well, to common

  sense. Danny thought: ‘Shit, what is this? All the pap-psychology I

  never believed in, castration fantasies and phobias and Oedipus

  complexes; he hasn’t even got a mother around to kill me for. What

  a load of garbage. I don’t feel threatened. Just that now he’ll be

  more like a younger brother. I can bring women home myself now.’

  Who? Whores? Nobody else will go near you. Cheap ugly w'hores a

  million times older than Tom’s girlfriends.

  ‘Dad, this is Zoe.’

  ‘Hi.’

  She had short brow'n hair, a beautiful smile, she didn’t seem

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  Greg Egan

  nervous at all. Only Danny was nervous, it wasn’t fair. How old was

  she? Was it illegal if they were both under age? Who went to gaol

  then? The parents?

  They both wore jeans and tee-shirts, identical. She was as tall as

  Tom. H er right hand rested on his right hip. Tom smiled amiably.

  ‘Grin bashfully,’ thought Danny. ‘Look sheepish, look almost winking. I need you to.’ Tom did nothing of the sort. They pulled out chairs and sat at the table, Zoe to Danny’s right, Tom to her right,

  facing Danny.

  ‘Hello, Zoe. How are you?’

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  (‘Do you know anything about fertility control?’)

  (‘Don’t be nervous, Dad, I had a vasectomy years ago. All my

  friends had it done too. We figured that we didn’t want any paternity suits cramping our style.’)

  ‘Do you go to school with Tom?’

  ‘No. We met at the Uni.’

  Tom was a cybernetics prodigy, and spent many hours after

  school and on weekends at the University, because the facilities at

  the high school were ‘hopelessly primitive, months out of date.’

  Danny knew as much about computers as was absolutely essential

  for his job: you hit one key and they played a Bach fugue, you hit

  another key and they played ‘Holiday in Cambodia’, then you drew

  a squiggle on a screen with your fingertip and the machine combined the three somehow into ‘the song’, which emerged as a four-minute version for the seven-inch single, a ten-minute version for

  the twelve-inch single, a six-minute version for the four-track EP, a

  five-minute version for the album, and a little magnetic card you

  gave to the people who made the video, which evidently allowed

  them to fit the song to the length of whatever they shot.

  Danny said, ‘And I was getting worried that Tom was only interested in machines!’ That made them both grin, then Danny grinned too, and felt happy that he’d said it. You can relax now, joke

  with them, be friendly. Everything’s okay.

  ‘Zoe’s really interested in your work.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My work? I hardly do anything. They don’t need producers,

  they just tell the computers what they want. Sometimes they sing a

  few words into a microphone, and it comes out in a different language at twice the speed with the harmonic properties of a foghorn, or rustling leaves, or lightning bolts. And I say “hey, maybe we

  The way she smiles, the things she says

  55

  should also do it with a sound like waves crashing, and have that

  backwards in the background”. Then they stare at me like I’m an

  idiot, go off and have a conference, then come back and tell me I’m

  a fucking genius, that it’s the perfect “solution”. To what, I don’t

  know. I don’t know what their problems are. I don’t understand

  why anybody hires me.’

  ‘You must be a fucking genius, Dad.’

  ‘Don’t you start. I make tiny changes to shit.’

  ‘Don’t you enjoy experimenting? Trying to come up with completely new sounds?’

  ‘They’re all new sounds. Too many new sounds. Nobody can

  decide what they sound like, they’re all so fucking unique. I rem em ber when I used to like songs because they sounded like other songs I liked. Not the same melody or the same words or the same chords

  (well, sometimes the same chords), but the same mood. These songs

  don’t have any mood, they don’t remind you of anything at all, they

  don’t cause associations. They’re impossible to remember. I used to

  really hate those fucking pop tunes they’d churn out, with the same

  fucking beat as all the others, guaranteed to invade your head like a

  fucking parasite after you’d heard it once, and guaranteed to have

  you smashing radios and frothing at the mouth after you’d heard it

  six hundred times, but good songs were different. You could

  remember a good song by the way it made you feel, the things it

  reminded you of. Strange moods, sure, the stranger the better. But

  the shit nowadays doesn’t have any mood at all. You hear it, that’s it.’

  ‘But what if it sounds like waves crashing, or lightning, like you

  said a minute ago?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, you can recognise that. But listening to waves crashing doesn’t do much for me. Lots of bands used to use synthesizers to make sounds like waves, like all kinds of things, and it was great,

  it was part of the music they wrote and played. Themselves. Now

  when the computers do it all it either sounds too much like real

  waves or just like nothing at all’

  ‘It’s just sour grapes. Dad used to be in a band himself, did I tell

  you? Oxymoromc Harmonies, they were called. He had a green and

  purple mohawk three feet high, and ten safety pins in his ear. I’ve

  got a photo of him somewhere that their drum m er gave me, Dad’s

  always trying to steal it and burn it.’

  Zoe reached over and ran her finger up from Danny’s earlobe,

  which made the back of his neck tingle.

  ‘Did you really have ten safety pins?’

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  Greg Egan

  ‘Yes. Very handy when I was changing Tom’s nappies.’

  They all laughed.

  ‘You’d better believe it. Dad was a genuine punk. Beaten up by

  skinheads every Saturday night outside the Trade Union Club. My

  mother included.’

  ‘She was not a skinhead!’

  ‘Rick said she was!’

  ‘H er boyfriend was. She wasn’t anything. She was unclassifiable,

  unique.’

  ‘I bet she
beat you up, though.’

  ‘No, her boyfriend did. Left me lying on the ground with five

  broken ribs. She came back later and took me to hospital. She said

  she hated violence, she was studying anthropology. I’ve told you all

  this before.’

  ‘It’s different every time.’

  ‘Bullshit, you just don’t listen.’

  She had studied him anthropologically for three years, and then

  moved on to study someone else, leaving Tom, who was evidently

  not thesis material. You’d enjoyed being a deserted father, hadn’t

  you Danny? Radical feminists admired you for it, admired you for

  not having been cunning enough to dump her with the kid rather

  than vice versa. The band fell apart but you got work as a mixer,

  Nightshift Childcare put Tom in their playpen for half your salary,

  and somehow there was time to fuck the non-separatist radical

  feminists. Time passed. You didn’t ever have to think about what

  you’d do with your life, it did it all by itself, it just happened and

  happened and happened. Look where you are tonight. Surprised?

  Disoriented? Why? Your little boy has grown up. It was either that

  or prepubescent death, and how likely is the latter? Did you expect

  some kind of literal cycle, did you think that you would be the one

  who was fourteen and fucking beautiful Zoe when sufficient time

  had passed? Oh no. You’re one turn up the spiral staircase away

  from that, Danny.

  ‘W hat does your father do, Zoe?’

  ‘I don’t have a father.’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No.’

  No? W hat does that mean?

  ‘I guess most families are single-parent nowadays,’ said Danny,

  fairly sure that it wasn’t true. ‘Like me and Tom.’

  Zoe smiled. ‘I don’t have any parents at all. I’m a robot.’

  The way she smiles, the things she says

  57

  Tom looked down at the table, then burst out laughing. Zoe

  started, then Danny joined in. It didn’t seem all that funny, but Tom

  started them off again whenever they flagged. He stood up, then

  knelt on the floor, hands on stomach, tears streaming from closed

  eyes. Danny put him in a loose headlock, tried to wrestle him over,